The Pittsburgh Steelers will NOT file a complaint to the NFL about their malfunctioning headsets in Thursday's game against the Patiots at Gillette Stadium, according to Adam Schefter of ESPN. That runs counter to a previous report from Charles Robinson of Yahoo! Sports who said the Steelers would take up the issue with the league office.
Steelers will not file a complaint with NFL, Bill Belichick responds with middle fingers
Despite previous reports, the Patriots’ communications were not shut down while Pittsburgh’s malfunctioning headsets were investigated, according to Yahoo! Sports.
Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports
After a 28-21 loss to the New England Patriots on Thursday night, Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin accused the Patriots of foul play, telling reporters that headsets going out is "always the case" at Gillette Stadium.
While there were reports that the communication system for the Patriots was shut down while the Steelers struggled to get their headsets to work, as mandated by NFL rules, Robinson reports that wasn’t the case. Instead, he reports the Patriots maintained communication during the first half while the Steelers’ problems were investigated:
Pittsburgh’s staff was incensed that officials didn’t force the Patriots to turn their own headsets off when the Steelers’ problems were reported, a team source told Yahoo Sports. Instead, New England apparently maintained all communications while Pittsburgh’s issues were being investigated. The source added that as late as the team leaving the stadium, the Steelers still hadn’t been provided an answer for why the Patriots were allowed to continue their communications, rather than both simply being shut down to fix the issue.
According to Robinson, the Steelers were going file a complaint with the NFL regarding both the equipment failure and the Patriots being allowed to continue communication.
On Friday morning, Bill Belichick responded to the accusations and said it’s sad that there are so many who “obviously have an agenda” against the Patriots:
I tried to type down what Belichick was saying as he said it. Forgive me for any errors Here's most of his statement pic.twitter.com/rSPgjWqEY2
— Mark Daniels (@MarkDanielsPJ) September 11, 2015 Headset malfunctions are nothing new and aren’t exclusive to Gillette Stadium, but this is far from the first finger pointed at the Patriots for the problem. Several teams have accused New England of toying with the communication system of the visiting team over the last decade.
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